Robots Don't Cry
by Draconian Elflord
Summary: Revamped. Sequel to 'His Own Song'. Sometimes, the most compassionate of us are the ones people don't expect to be compassionate at all. Yet another tragic spiritual FLCL fic. Please R&R, no cruelty please.


Robots Don't Cry

A/N: You know, this is something that's been going on in my head for a while. It was kind of connected to "His Own Song". However, it was coaxed out by the few people who have reviewed this other FLCL fic. This little fic is actually related to that one, and occurs slightly after "His Own Song" Yet again, it is sad but spiritually uplifting somehow. Thus seems to be the nature of my work, often.

Disclaimer: As was stated in my other fic, I do no own any of the characters, episodes, or anything even slightly pertaining to FLCL. I did own the original characters in the previous story, but I don't own anything else.

- - - - -

Even the sunlight in Mabase seemed fake, somehow. Albeit, he had never experienced the sunlight anywhere else, but for some reason, it had always seemed so fake.

Because he'd heard them say that nothing ever happened here.

This was the manner by which Lord Canti learned of all things. He saw, heard, and felt them. No speech was ever directed toward him, but he heard every word that was said.

They thought he wasn't listening. But in truth, he had been listening from the very second he had been born. None of them could say that.

They thought he couldn't understand. But if he could have told them what he thought, he might have told that it was they who misunderstood.

They thought he was stupid because he couldn't speak. He was often amazed at some of the stupid things they could manage to say to each other: the foolish games, the hurtful words, the truth that sounded like lies and the lies that sounded like truth.

They thought he was useless. But in the end, he gave more of himself and to others, was so utterly unselfish, that he was probably the most useful sentient being around.

But robots couldn't get their feelings hurt, after all. You could think and say anything you want about them, and it really didn't matter.

They thought a lot of things about him. The only person who had never thought, never assumed anything about him was the boy whose head he had emerged from: his father, as he sometimes liked to think of him.

Why exactly he had emerged from this particular boy's head was still a salient mystery to the silent Lord Canti. Even two years after the strange events concerning the alien woman had occurred, his undeniable connection to her still puzzled the robot in the dark hours of the night. What exactly had made him take this particular form, what psychological processes must have collided in the boy's mind at the moment of his emergence were questions of importance to the stoic android. And when exactly it was that this boy had become less and less of strange oddity to him (as Canti had to the boy, no doubt) and more and more like a true father was not a question of importance. He had at least answered that one.

Would any child dare to ask where and when and why a parent's love had come into fruition?

It was these thoughts, and others, which passed through the computerized mind of the great Lord Canti as he began to move about the small suburban home in the wee hours of the morning. Breakfast…breakfast curry…

And this was the way of Lord Canti's existence. He cooked meals, washed dishes, cleaned the house, did laundry, ran errands, and did just about anything he found to occupy himself. The Nabanada house was always clean, especially without the alien woman always making chaos of his precious order.

Then again, things did get awfully lonely without her around sometimes…

But robots don't get lonely.

- - - -

Robots don't despise. If they could, Lord Canti would despise the plastic yellow flowers standing unnaturally upright in their painted blue vase. They reminded Canti too much of his own rather unnatural birth, and the way he must seem to all human beings: as a false thing only pretending to be the real thing. Above all things, if he could despise, Canti would have despised being treated as though he were not a person.

What defined a person, anyways? Was it flesh and blood, muscles and bones? If so, then he was not. But was there more? Was there more to being human than simply having flesh and blood, muscles and bones?

Could perhaps the feelings of love or compassion define a human being? Could warmth, despite a cold body, be truly what a human was?

He could not stand those yellow flowers because they reminded him of how he must look to others. They looked like real flowers, but had neither smell nor dust upon their stems, and they would not wilt and die like real ones. And thus, they were scorned upon as if there were something wrong with them.

Ah, but breakfast would be a tediously long and hard affair this morning. He lit the pilot and the water in the pan began to heat. It would be boiling soon. The kettle would soon be singing for the tea. Taking the cups and bowls down from the cupboards, he began to set the Nabanada table.

It was then that he noted the roughly scrawled not that stood, propped up, against the other side of the blue vase. It was his father's hand. Technically, robots could no more read than they could feel. However, he had learned to recognize figures, and with the help of a computerized mind, thus could understand the words:

_Dad, _

_I'm leaving. I should have left a long time ago. This place will kill me, and I'm not going to die. I hope you understand that I have a few things to say before I go. _

_I don't want to be this person I am. I didn't want to play baseball or be the cat. I didn't want to be in the dumb play at all. I don't want those stupid eyebrows, and don't want to be mistaken for my brother. I don't want to live in Mabase anymore. _

_But there are a few things that I do want. I want to play the guitar and be free. I want to feel a real breeze in my hair and breathe real air for once in my life. I want to see places far away and meet strangers. I want to be somewhere else. That's why I have to leave this place. _

_I guess I should say something along the lines of I'll be safe and not to worry and that I'll miss you and all that kind of thing. But of all of that, I really don't know. I guess I'll do the best that I can. All I know is that if I stay here, I'm going to die, and I DON'T want to die. _

_I really don't know what I'm supposed to say here, so I guess I'll just say this. It's simple and sweet, just how everything's always been around here. _

_Goodbye, and thanks, _

_Naota. _

In some part of his mind, Canti knew then that his father was dead. He knew, somehow, that somewhere on a strip of highway not far from here, there lay the body of boy that he knew all to well. It was a feeling (only robots had no feelings) that would have been somewhere near his stomach, if he had had a stomach. There was something within him that let him know that his father lived no more.

Robots do not cry. They have no tears within them to cry. They have no feelings within them to inspire tears. But for the first time in his life, Lord Canti, the one who was born from his father's forehead in a strange recollection of a Freudian ritual, the one who had one hosted the pirate king Atomask, wished that he, too, could cry. So many times in life, people had the appropriate opportunity to cry, were given the ideal social situations to do so, and yet they held back. Why? If only they knew what was like not to be able to…

'Father,' Canti thought, 'your words are so like my own. I, too, want to live. How am I supposed to live without the only person who has every cared for me? How?"

It occurred to him just as he realized that he was leaving the Nabanada house. Outside, the morning sun hit his shoulders, and he realized it.

It occurred to him that he did not want to die either, and he had to leave if he wanted to live.

As he spread his enormous, black-feathered wings and began to kiss the morning breeze, the sky growing closer every moment, he realized that he, too, had been given a life to live. Through his father's wish for freedom and purity of life, he had granted Lord Canti his own chance to experience freedom and purity, his own life to live. As he quickly soared away from the city that had been their prison, rising into the sky that was his only limit, Canti was suddenly overcome with a feeling like ecstasy.

If robots could cry, he would cry tears of both joy and of sorrow. He did not know what to feel. Every sensation seemed to melt away into a new one as quickly as it came. It was confusing, and he wasn't quite sure what to do. Robots could not feel. That was what he had been told forever.

It didn't matter what people said. Canti could feel his heart swelling with joy, sinking with sorrow, and rising in an orgy of new things he had never felt before. He could feel like any other person could feel, more than they could feel, even.

Yes, this must have been what his father had meant; this is the feeling he must have felt when he left this place. Lord Canti was going to go someplace where there was real sunlight to feel on his shoulders, feel the real wind whipping around his shoulders. He had no idea where he was to go, but surely, it was going to be somewhere he could live, somewhere he could feel, somewhere he could be real.

It didn't matter if people thought robots couldn't feel, didn't matter if people thought robots weren't real people. Lord Canti was free now, and he was damned if he was going to listen to those people anymore.

That was what his father would have wanted.

That's what he wanted, too.

**Lord Canti, Hail! Bonsai! **

THE END

A/N: And now, for the people in the cheap seats…

(hums)

_With the kids, sing out the future_

_Maybe kids don't need the masters_

_Just a-waiting for the Little Busters_

_Oh Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeahhhhhhhhhhh _

_Yeah, Yeah, Yeah… _

Um…reviews would be nice…puppy eyes Please?


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